here i am trying to suspend sensation, to arrest it at its beginning point, or maybe its pinnacle, because it blurs and morphs and builds so much i lose sight of where we are in its progression. my mouth is spit-slick from kissing you, we’re lying in bed beside your bookshelf, and breathing is simultaneously easy and thrilling and laborious, like the eyeball ache of watching flames spark from metal beams being welded together. my heart is loud and fast, a speedcar in my chest, and embarrassingly it’s not really one of those cool ones; it’s one of the overtly decorated and ostentatious ones dudebros drive when they’re overcompensating, which is to say it is definitely noticeable and not in the good way. you skate fingertips down my neck, over my collarbone and down the front of me — that thought disappears, i can’t even be sure i’m breathing when you lean in to kiss me again, everything is hot and a little wet like the forest hiking trail at 8.30am in the morning and my skin is shimmering itself into vibrations. i wonder if you can feel this tightening, the way everything inside me is yearning towards you a leaning towards and reaching out, i’m shaking when you ask me why my breath is running ragged and isn’t it ridiculous and shameful that my dress is still on? rucked up around my belly and crumpled but still on, collar pushed away from my skin and shoulders where fabric has been replaced with red kiss marks but still on, tied tight at my waist and digging into my skin, i can feel every seam and how it rubs raw against me when i move to get closer, i don’t have an answer but you ask why again in that smug way because you already know but want me to say it so i say it and from somewhere deep inside my head i watch myself dig my fingers into your forearm and guide it against me, feel myself surge forward like the helpless tide, fall into you and dissolve —

*

all i have ever wanted was to be honest and true. to peel off the layers
and get under the sheets. to stand still, the both of us, while all the world
is rushing on. there could be a deafening drone. we won’t know until later. 

*

what else would you have me confess? that i was sorry for my desire,
for wanting at all? that it was you i wanted to keep —

*

despite everything i am trying to write a letter that washes you away in sensation. something that takes you right off the beach, and takes your shadow and imprint in the sand with it. despite everything i am trying to connect. despite the utter loneliness of the endeavour sometimes. i put down an image and someone picks up a sound or a sign, not quite the original same thing and not quite different. and anyway who’s to say what you pick up isn’t only and completely yours?

i took a can and sprayed a shape into the wall to try to show you what my heart has twisted into. how can i tell you what i mean when i don’t even know? or when i know and it shifts anyway? despite everything i get onto the bicycle, pedal myself down to the post box at the end of the lane (or the start), slip a letter in and have faith the postman will take it to you when i don’t see them do that. despite everything i set out a piece of writing paper, take a pen to it and scribble and scribble until my insides are on the page in the only way i could have imagined how to do, in that moment in that half hour and in that space. with the breaths i took.

and i know a letter is just a letter, i know sometimes not even speech with all its emphatic dips and rises and my hands and their gestures can help me get through to you to tell you exactly how i love you and sometimes not even that is enough for how you need to be loved but i send the letter anyway. i kiss the crystals and mail them anyway, and they go over miles and miles of ocean to get to you anyway, catch through the clouds and breathe in their dark compartment with the baggage to arrive at your little red door, into the room where i don’t know if the plant i bought you still lives. i don’t know anything, but these parts of me i keep putting out into the universe in hopes that they find you. find home. in hopes that they will leave me so i can breathe again.